It doesn’t need further validation: people are actually peeing in swimming pools. Now researchers venture to know the full extent of the offense or how much urine can actually be found in the water.
A team from University of Alberta devised a test to estimate the concentration of pee in a large volume of water. The test measured the amount of artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium, or ACE, which is fairly common in the human diet as a common ingredient of processed foods and passes through the body unchanged.
ACE surfaced as an ideal urine indicator since it’s not metabolized by the human body and is stable among large temperatures and pH ranges.
Testing Urine Concentrations In Pools And Tubs
The researchers found that every single one of the 31 pools and hot tubs they tested in two unidentified Canadian cities tested positive for the sweetener. The concentration was up to 570 times the starting level in tap water samples.
They also monitored the sweetener’s levels in two Canadian public pools over three weeks and discovered that swimmers had released 75 liters of urine into a large pool of around 830,000 liters and 30 liters into a pool half the first one’s size.
“Our study provides additional evidence that people are indeed urinating in public pools and hot tubs,” said lead study author and graduate student Lindsay Blackstock, although clarifying that they did not track the number of pool users and therefore cannot estimate individual peeing events per day.
In the study, eight hot tubs also emerged to have higher urine concentrations, including a hotel Jacuzzi that maintained over triple the levels of sweetener than in the worst-performing swimming pool.
Blackstock advised being more considerate of other pool users and to make sure to leave the pool to use the toilet once nature comes knocking.
Beyond The Ick Factor
The issue, however, goes beyond hygiene. Urine can mix with other pool chemicals and create disinfection byproducts (DBPs), which could lead in dangerous reactions such as red eyes, asthma, and other respiratory problems.
Blackstock explained to ResearchGate that urine, like sweat, is a main contributor of nitrogenous compounds in pools and tubs. These compounds react with chlorine and other disinfectants and thus form DBPs.
In fact, there has been a link made between asthma and professional swimmers as well as pool workers. The higher the number of swimmers too, the greater the formation of DBPs in the pool, with the amount of exposure varying based on pool use, pool volume, and maintenance practices.
Public education, Blackstock emphasized, is the best way to discourage urinating in pools. Even Olympic winners such as Michael Phelps even thought it was acceptable behavior for everyone to do it, to pee in pools since “chlorine kills it.”
“We recommend that all pool users should rinse off excess personal care products in the provided showers before entering public pools,” she urged pool users in addition to making that responsible run toward the restroom to relieve one’s self.
The findings were discussed in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
